A day after one of the more bizarre finishes to a Monday night game that we’ve ever seen, with the Niners attempting to win the game via a dive from beyond the two yard line, coach Mike Singletary and offensive coordinator Mike Martz are blaming the outcome on the quality of the information they received from game officials before the last play of the game was called.

Said Singletary on Tuesday: “It was very difficult getting the information that we needed. I was on the field constantly talking to a couple of the officials about where the ball would be spotted [and] how much time we needed to get back on the clock. I thought we needed 12 seconds to be back on the clock. They gave us four and then the ball was moved as I left those two guys going back to the sideline. They moved the ball back to the two-and-a-half yard-line, or something like that.

“Meanwhile, Mike Martz gets the information that the ball will be — the clock will start on the whistle, rather than the snap because, to me that is the rule. It should be that the ball – the clock starts on the snap of the ball and not on the whistle. It was – what I was trying to do was just get the information, which we were not getting clearly, and if we were, it was not the correct information. That was the most frustrating thing about the last minute.”

The biggest problem with the information, or lack thereof? Martz thought that the Niners were getting the ball on the half-yard line, which prompted him to call for an inside run by backup running back Michael Robinson.

Said Martz, who insisted that the ball was placed a yard farther from the goal line than it actually was: “We did not know the ball was going to be on the three-and-a-half [yard line], obviously, or we would have never called that play. We thought that we were going to be given back time on the clock. We thought the ball was going to be somewhere around the one-yard line. The play made two yards, so it’s a moot point whether it was on the one [yard line] or the one-half [yard line]. It doesn’t matter. He would have scored. If it’s on the three-and-a-half, obviously, we don’t do that play. . . .

“I still didn’t know until this morning,” Martz added. “I left the stadium thinking we didn’t make it because we were from the one-and-a-half or the one-yard line. I left the stadium thinking that the ball was still, we just – I couldn’t believe that we couldn’t punch it in from the one-yard line. I was upset with that. I didn’t know it was on the three – I couldn’t see from where I was. It happened so fast, half the guys up here didn’t know. We didn’t know. You look at the tape and it’s on the three-and-a-half [yard line] or three-yard line, wherever it is.”

Martz said that former Niners coach Mike Nolan even called on Tuesday to chine in regarding the situation. “He said, ‘Hey, you got victimized by the replay,’ which is basically what happened,” Martz said. “I guess there’s really nobody to blame other than, it was just a real lack of communication there that probably wasn’t very good.”

So what does Singletary intend to do to make his displeasure known to the league? Well, nothing.“

I’ve been told that I should probably go ahead and call the league, but it’s the last thing I want to do right now,” Singletary said. “I don’t need to hear that, ‘Well that’s on us.’ I don’t really need to hear that. In my mind, because they’re not going to change anything, the game’s still gone. So in my mind, I’m going to let it go.”

Still, the obvious thing to do with four ticks on the clock would have been to spike the ball and then regroup for the next play. If there was any doubt (and apparently there was plenty) about where the ball would be spotted or what the next/last play should be, the solution was simple.Kill the clock.

So we don’t want to hear pissing and moaning about information or the lack thereof. The big scoreboard in the stadium shows :04. The clock starts on the referee’s signal. And so Hill calls for the snap at that moment and takes a step back and slams the ball into the ground.

Four seconds is more time than you think. Count out four seconds right now. It’s enough time for a professional athlete to recognize that the referree has called for the clock to start, to then call for the ball to be snapped, and to then spike the ball into the ground.

As to the notion that Martz didn’t know the ball was going to be placed outside the one yard line, what the hell was he doing while the prior play was being reviewed? Surely, one or more of the cast of thousands whom the team’s front office employs was in position to let Martz know that the ball was beyond the two when Frank Gore’s knee had struck the ground.

So the message from Singletary and Martz is simple: “We’re just going to let it go. After we blame the whole thing on someone else.”

Frankly, if the 49ers keep these guys around after the 2008 season, they deserve to continue to suck.

A group of Bengals fans have rented space on four billboards around Cincinnati to plead with the team to make changes to the managerial structure. One of them reads “Dear Bengals, Hire a general manager. Love, your fans.”

The billboard buyers are trying to raise funds to keep the messages up via a website called WhoDeyRevolution.com. They hope to raise $4,500 and are taking donations through the site. It’s the second phase of what they’re calling “Project Mayhem,” whose two stated goals are disrupting the natural order of Mike Brown’s Bengals and reducing Mike Brown’s profits. The first phase was calling the team’s “jerk line,” designed for reporting unruly behavior at Bengal games, and reporting Brown as a jerk.

As you can tell from the billboard, it is Brown’s refusal to bring other voices into the decision-making process they find particularly galling. “18 seasons of Mike Brown making football decisions have led the Bengals to a record of 98-183, the worst winning percentage of all professional sports teams over that stretch,” they write. “Einstein’s famous quote “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” should be framed and put above the door to Mike Brown’s office.”

On this week’s installment of Showtime’s Inside the NFL, Warren Sapp uses some rather colorful language to describe his former teammate, Keyshawn Johnson.

Sapp was asked during the show’s “Ask Warren Anything” segment whether he would watch Johnson’s reality show about interior design.

Per NFL.com, Sapp answered, “Me, watch Keyshawn on an interior decorating show? Keyshawn, I knew you were a b****. And thanks for making it all clear.”

Wow.

Sapp and Johnson were Tampa Bay Buccaneers teammates from 2000 to 2003. This is far from the first time Sapp has criticized Johnson; he has previously referred to him as a “malcontent” and has assessed Keyshawn’s skills as a wide receiver by saying, “Keyshawn said, ‘Give me the damn ball,’ and he averaged 8 yards a catch. That’s not even a first down! . . . I watched him work. I watched him come out of the huddle and go the wrong way.”

But Sapp hasn’t previously used such colorful language to describe Johnson. At least not publicly.

Sapp also addressed the reports that he’s making a pain of himself on Dancing With The Stars.

“I’ll tell you what,” Sapp said. “I have to be honest about the diva thing. I am a little eccentric at times. I like cold water and in California they like it room temperature. And as a 300-pound man I needed a little cold water. So they gave me a big cooler and they put “Warren’s Water,” so I guess that’s where they get that from. If a big fella needing cold water is being a diva, then diva I am.”

Yeah I'm not a room temperature water fan either. I wonder if they just handed them those water bottles you can get at Cosco unrefrigerated and he wanted to have his chilled. I would probably prefer it that way too...

Yeah I'm not a room temperature water fan either. I wonder if they just handed them those water bottles you can get at Cosco unrefrigerated and he wanted to have his chilled. I would probably prefer it that way too...

I'm kind of a freak about my drinks. I need them ice cold. Can hardly drink milk without ice in it.

Per TMZ.com, Pacman allegedly owes $23,000 in legal fees. Though TMZ doesn’t name the lawyer(s) who have sued Pacman, one of them likely is Manny Arora, who severed his agent relationship with Jones several weeks ago.

UPDATE: The fine folks at TMZ.com tell us that the lawyers suing Jones are located in Las Vegas, the site of one of Pacman’s various legal entanglements.

We never dreamed that there would be such an uproar regarding the story of an NFL player who had an image of himself land on a family member’s Facebook page. The player in question doesn’t have a high degree of name recognition, and we badly underestimated the degree of curiousity it would create.

We were concerned initially about posting the photo and identifying the player because our information was based only on our source, and because it wasn’t obvious that the player was who we were told he was. We have since obtained information from two more sources, so we’re now confident that we can post the photo without fear of getting the NFLPA treatment in a court of law.

But we post the photo and identify the player with this disclaimer — the picture appeared on the Facebook page of his younger sister, and she has since claimed that she Photoshopped it. (An if it’s truly Photoshopped, then we should fire Taco Bill and hire her.)

We’re also told that the player is not in trouble with his team. (That said, another source said that the picture was taken down only after the team became aware of it.)

The player in question is Eagles cornerback Jack Ikegwuonu, a 2008 fourth-round draft pick who tore an ACL in January and who has been shelved for his rookie year. He was regarded as a potential first-round selection before being injured, even with pending criminal charges arising from the theft of an Xbox (the old kind, not a 360). He reached a plea deal in the days leading up to the draft, but the arrangement cratered when his brother, also charged in the incident, refused to accept it.

Here’s the photo. He’s the guy on the right with his hand over his mouth, Photoshopped or otherwise. (And as several readers have pointed out, the powder apparently are crushed up pills — most likely aspirin — and not cocaine. We’ll defer to Matt Jones of the Jags for a final ruling.)

Bucs coach Jon Gruden said Monday that the ankle injury suffered on Sunday by running back Earnest Graham potentially might knock him out of action for the rest of the year.

“Earnest Graham’s ankle looks to be a serious injury,” Gruden said, “and his status for the rest of the season is very much in question right now.”

Graham’s loss could be Cadillac Williams’ gain. The 2005 top-five pick didn’t play on Sunday in his first active game since tearing a patellar tendon in September 2007. If Graham is done for the year, a real need for Williams would arise.

“We brought Cadillac up with the understanding he was ready to go,” Gruden said.

If time is winding down and your QB doesn't go for a risky TD at the last second of OT because he thinks he can get a fresh set of downs during a second OT, then it's a pretty big deal, don't you think?

If time is winding down and your QB doesn't go for a risky TD at the last second of OT because he thinks he can get a fresh set of downs during a second OT, then it's a pretty big deal, don't you think?

He also thought the Super Bowl quarters were 20 minutes instead of the normal 15 min quarters.